Robert Mueller steps all over Trump’s UK visit by indicting 12 Russians for DNC hack.

Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian military officers on Friday and accused them of hacking into the Democratic National Committee to sabotage the 2016 presidential election.

The indictments, announced by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, come just days before a scheduled Monday summit in Helsinki between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

They are the latest charges in a probe that has already netted guilty pleas from three former Trump campaign aides while the president himself remains under investigation by Mueller for potential obstruction of justice.

Rosenstein said the Russians stole and released Democratic documents after planting malicious computer codes in the network of the DNC as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

He said Russia’s GRU military intelligence service was behind online entities that disseminated and promoted the documents under the names Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks.

And if you are looking for collusion, well here you go.

. @KenDilanianNBC notes indictment alleges Russia “on or about July 27, 2016” started trying to access Clinton’s personal emails. Which is the same day Trump gave his “Russia if you’re listening, I hope your able to find the 30,000 emails…” news conference.

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““The indictments Rod Rosenstein announced are good news for all Americans. The Russians are nailed. No Americans are involved,” Giuliani posted to Twitter. “Time for Mueller to end this pursuit of the President and say President Trump is completely innocent.””

““You might remember throughout the campaign — and indeed up until this very day — President Trump has referred to the Russia investigation as a witch hunt, and he’s cast doubt and said it’s a joke, in fact, at one point, the idea that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“According to his own Justice Department, it’s not a joke, it’s what happened exactly,”

“It is a stunning set of indictments and clearly indicates that a lot of what the president and his administration have said about the hacks on Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC simply was not true,” Tapper concluded.

“That’s right, Jake,” CNN justice correspondent Evan Pérez agreed.”

Anonymous
July 13, 2018 at 12:18 pm

As usual Rudy did not listen to what Rosenstein said, this is only one part of the investigation and it is his paranoia that Mueller is investigating trump, Mueller is investigating if there was meddling in the election, so why does he assume it involves trump, unless of course because he knows trump is guilty.

And I find it hilarious that he posted the russians are nailed, I thought it was a witch hunt and fake.

Ukelele50
July 13, 2018 at 10:32 am

I’d like to read your take on Stormy’s arrest. She was arrested in the Congressional district represented by….Jim Jordan!

Trump Told Russia To Get Clinton’s Emails. The Same Day, They Obeyed.
A new indictment from Robert Mueller reveals that Russia appeared to be listening to what Trump wanted.

In the morning of July 27, 2016, Donald Trump encouraged Russian hackers to find emails that had been deleted from Hillary Clinton’s private server that she used while serving as secretary of state.

“I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said at a press conference in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Russia appeared to be listening and heeded Trump’s call, according to a bombshell revelation on Friday. A grand jury convened by special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officials for their involvement in hacking the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election.

The indictment states that on July 27 ― the same day as Trump’s press conference ― Russian hackers, “for the first time,” attempted to break into email accounts, including those used by Clinton’s personal office and her presidential campaign. Notably, the indictment specifies that the hack happened in the evening, meaning the Russian officials could have done it after Trump’s press conference.

Considering trump’s appalling behavior on this trip, he may have lucked out on the news cycle.

Anonymous
July 13, 2018 at 2:57 pm

When is his behavior not appalling? Proud of the Brits for their taking to the streets!

Anonymous
July 13, 2018 at 1:02 pm

Roger Stone Communicated With Russian Hackers, Mueller Indictment Suggests
The indictment notes “a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump,” widely known to be Stone.

Among the revelations in special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers on Friday involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee was that the hackers communicated with individuals in the United States — including “a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.”

Although not named in Friday’s documents, that person is widely known to be Trump confidant Roger Stone, who has previously posted screenshots of his interactions with one of the hackers, Guccifer 2.0.

…Stone has also admitted to communicating with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, who published the leaked DNC emails.

The events laid out in Mueller’s indictment resemble details from previous reporting about Stone and his communications during Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The Top Bombshells In Robert Mueller’s Indictment Of Russian DNC Hackers
The indictment reveals that a congressional candidate asked the Russians for dirt on an opponent, and that the Russians seemed to be following Trump’s lead.

Here are the most crucial revelations the 29-page grand jury indictment brings to light.

Chiefly, the indictment names names. The defendants were part of the Russian Federation’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU). GRU units 26165 and 74455, the indictment says, “conducted large-scale cyber operations to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.”

The defendants, according to the indictment, were specifically involved in the effort to hack Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The Russians also “monitored the computers of dozens of [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] and DNC employees.”

Trump’s ‘Culture’ Comments About Immigrants Echo European White Nationalists’
The president continues to find allies in avowed racists.

…President Donald Trump said he believes that immigrants in Europe are causing the continent to lose its culture. European white supremacists believe the same thing.

In a sit-down interview with The Sun, a British tabloid, on Thursday, Trump said migrants seeking safety from violence abroad have “changed the fabric of Europe.”

“And I don’t mean that in a positive way,” he told the paper. “I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad. I think you’re losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago.”

In a press conference later that day, he lambasted London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

“I think that all of this immigration has really changed the fabric of Europe,” Trump said. “Now, I speak as an outsider when I say that, but I speak as somebody who loves Europe, and I think it’s too bad. I think [Khan has] done a very bad job on terrorism. I think he’s done a bad job on crime.”

Trump’s dangerous rhetoric is nothing new but is a reminder of the closely held beliefs he seems to share with so many avowed racists.

…Todd noted how Trump basically threatened to cancel the North Korea summit at one point over far less, and now the DOJ has just confirmed “Vladimir Putin has lied to the President, to his face.”

“So why do you take his word on Syria? Why do you take his word on Ukraine?” Todd asked, arguing there’s a “very strong case to be made that at a minimum this should be postponed until there is a better understanding of what it is we want out of this meeting.”

“Optically,” he added, “this makes the President look more guilty.”

The indictment says there’s no allegations of any Americans wittingly aiding this effort, but as Todd noted, indictments of Americans are probably the next shoe to drop.

He also said the Republican grilling of Peter Strzok yesterday looks even worse given all this:

“I don’t want to use the word McCarthyism loosely, but history is going to treat that hearing very unkindly, and it’s going to be in the same category of embarrassing moments of congressional history that at the top will always be Mr. McCarthy and what happened there. But this is going to be in that top five of embarrassing moments. This is a public servant, not a political actor. The way he was treated, the conspiratorial nature, the irresponsible aspects of it––and as bad as it looked yesterday, given these serious indictments… it looks even worse.”

Adam Schiff All But Called Trump A Traitor In Response To New Mueller Indictments

…The last sentence of the final paragraph was especially brutal. In case you missed it, Rep. Schiff (D-CA) made it clear that he believes that Trump’s will not put the interests of the United States first when he meets with Putin. This means that the man who may soon be running the House Russia investigation doesn’t think that Trump has the best interests of the country in mind when he meets with an enemy of America.

Schiff and Rep. Ted Lieu are both correct. The Trump/Putin meeting should be called off, and there is no way in the world that Trump should be allowed to meet alone with Putin. It is not a matter of liking or disliking Trump. The Trump/Putin sit down is a grave national security concern. With no one else in the room, the American people will have no idea how Trump may have sold them out to Russia.

Adam Schiff was correct. Donald Trump lacks the basic courage and love of country that a president needs to challenge and stand up to a criminal like Putin. It is not a partisan issue. One can’t imagine Ronald Reagan holding secret meetings and refusing to criticize the USSR during the Cold War. Obama would have never met with Putin alone, and he would have canceled any summit after these indictments were handed down.

Trump isn’t a president. He is a low-level middle manager who works for Putin.

““In addition to releasing documents directly to the public, the defendants transferred stolen documents to another organization, not named in the indictment, and discussed timing the release of the documents in an attempt to enhance the impact on the election,” Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told a news conference.

Friday’s indictment was secured by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his probe into Russian involvement in the election. It was the first by Mueller that directly charges the Russian government with meddling in the election, unexpectedly won by Trump. The Kremlin denies it interfered.”

Anonymous
July 13, 2018 at 2:43 pm

Donald Trump is on his way to meet privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin as we speak. If Mueller didn’t want to interfere with that meeting, he could have waited to publicly announce these indictments until after Trump got home. Instead, Mueller is making a point of rolling this out just days before the meeting. This ensures that the media coverage of the summit will be within the context of how Putin hacked the election and shared the hacked material with one or more people in Trump’s orbit. That’ll ensure that the public views the summit in this context as well. Perhaps most importantly, this ensures that Donald Trump will be panicking during his summit with Putin. In fact he’s been panicking about it all week, because Rod Rosenstein announced this morning that he already informed Trump about it privately days ago.

It’s now clear that Robert Mueller is trying to screw Donald Trump on purpose by rolling out these Trump-Russia indictments at the worst possible time for Trump. Mueller has ensured that the Trump-Putin summit will be viewed by the public as an attempt at dealing with the fallout from the Trump-Russia election rigging conspiracy. Mueller has also set Trump up to make panic-driven mistakes over the next week. The timing of these indictments isn’t some grand coincidence – if it were, Mueller could have simply waited. Mueller is turning the screws.

Trump’s House Republican defenders are making a new move to shut down the Mueller investigation by impeaching Rod Rosenstein.

Politico reported:
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, in fact, had the impeachment document on the floor of the House at the very moment that Rosenstein spoke to reporters and TV cameras Friday.

Conservative GOP lawmakers have been plotting to remove Rosenstein for weeks, accusing him of slow-walking their probe of FBI agents they’ve accused of bias against President Donald Trump.

Conservative sources say they could file the impeachment document as soon as Monday, as Meadows and Freedom Caucus founder Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) look to build Republican support in the House. One source cautioned, however, that the timing was still fluid.

This move by the Freedom Caucus is by no means a slam dunk to pass. In fact, it is a certainty that a substantial number of House Republicans will not support any effort to impeach Rosenstein and open the door for Trump to close down the Mueller investigation.

If Rosenstein were impeached, it would give Trump the political cover to fire him, which would allow the president to appoint someone new to oversee the Russia investigation, who would fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Chanting “Donald Trump has got to go,” tens of thousands of protesters marched through London on Friday waving banners and banging pots to demonstrate against the U.S. president on his first official visit to Britain.

Organizers said 250,000 people were protesting in London and other demonstrations were expected in cities around the country, including Windsor where the U.S. President was due to have tea with Queen Elizabeth.

“Lock him in the tower,” one homemade placard said there, just yards from where Prince Harry married Meghan Markle in May.

Police, who declined to put a number on the size of the demonstration, had sealed off parts of London including Piccadilly and Regent Street for marchers, while thousands filled Trafalgar Square to hear speeches.

“Trump is not welcome in Britain,” said Grish Gregoran, 58, a shopkeeper who took the day off to attend the protests.

The indictments Rod Rosenstein announced are good news for all Americans. The Russians are nailed. No Americans are involved.
Time for Mueller to end this pursuit of the President and say President Trump is completely innocent.
—————-
Fat chance, Rudy!

Anonymous
July 13, 2018 at 4:33 pm

Sam Brownback, the U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, complained to the British ambassador in Washington D.C. about the treatment of an English right-wing activist who is in jail for disrupting a trial, according to three sources familiar with the discussion.

…Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, though he also uses other aliases, is a founder of the English Defense League, which has organized violent demonstarations against Islamic immigrants in the UK in the past decade. More recently, Robinson has branded himself a journalist and campaigner against Islamic extremism, a move that won him contacts with American anti-Muslim activists.

Robinson was arrested in late May outside a courthouse in Leeds, England, while making video recordings about a trial related to child molestation and jailed for 13 months for violating English law limiting publicity during criminal trials.

Brownback raised the jailing of Robinson during a meeting with Darroch that covered a range of “religious freedom issues”, the British official confirmed earlier this week.

Brownback told Darroch that if Britain did not treat Robinson more sympathetically, the Trump administration might be compelled to criticize Britain’s handling of the case, according to the two sources in contact with organizers of the planned pro-Robinson demonstration.

Former FBI counterintelligence agent Clint Watts said on Morning Joe today that congressional Republicans, as well as President Donald Trump, are acting like Russian pawns. “It’s almost as if they are carrying out a script from a Russian influence operation.” Watts said.

“First thing you do is you seed accounts in social media, seed players, operatives, political parties, NGOs, groups like that into the U.S. audience space, you align with them based on interest, financial being a big one, information being another one, common issues, like ‘America first. That’s great for Russia, because if America puts America first and the world second, Russia can get on the world stage.”

Classic intelligence operations have the goal of influencing their desired audience toward certain behaviors that the Russians want. And he said that the GOP congressmen who went to Russia on the Fourth of July were a perfect example of how the Russians manipulate behaviors of their targets.

“Over time you just cultivate those relationships, and the end goal is a behavior change in your target audience,” Watts said. “We saw this happen last week. We saw senators go to Russia and literally repeat lines that Russia would want them to say — sanctions aren’t working, maybe you shouldn’t pursue these, or everybody does influence and meddling.”

“Sen. (Richard) Shelby (R-AL), he essentially repeated a line you will hear come out of the Kremlin,” Watts said, referring to the senator’s description of Russia as a competitor, not an adversary — which Trump has also repeated.

“That’s the behavior change they want,” Watts said. “The thing we don’t realize is that it is boiling the frog. It is very slow and the goal is to nudge the target audience, which is the Republican Party, to take on your agenda.”

Watts also said he believes that the House Judiciary Committee hearing with FBI agent Peter Strzok was designed to further Russian interests at the expense of Americans and American institutions.

“You saw Republicans in Congress attacking another U.S. institution to defend President Trump, who’s under investigation from a Russia collusion and obstruction case,” Watts said. “This is exactly how active measures (play out), which is have your adversary fight with itself so they cannot fight with you and withdraw on the world stage.”

“At every single point, with the exception of one — removal of sanctions — Russia has advanced its goals and foreign policy,” he added.